A blog about technologies, science, books and other stuff, especially science fiction

Fantasy

Roger Joseph Zelazny was born on May 13, 1937 in Euclid, Ohio, USA. Initially, his career as a writer was part time writing short fiction and only in 1965 a cut version of his novel “.. . And Call Me Conrad ” was published in “The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction”. In 1966 the novel was published as an integral version as a book with the title “This Immortal”. The novel won the Hugo Award.

In 1965 Roger Zelazny also published the novella “He Who Shapes”, winner of the Nebula Award, which was expanded into the novel “The Dream Master” in 1966. In 1967 Roger Zelazny published the novel “Lord of Light”, who won the Hugo Award.

In 1970 Roger Zelazny published the first book of his fantasy cycle of the Chronicles of Amber “Nine Princes in Amber”. The first five books, published in the 1970s, describe the adventures of Prince Corwin of Amber and are for this reason also called the Corwin series.

Roger Zelazny died on June 14, 1995 because of a cancer that also caused him kidney failure. Some works were published posthumously such as “Psycoshop” in 1998, a novel started by Alfred Bester.

Robert Albert Bloch was born on April 5, 1917 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

In 1934, Bloch published the story “Lilies” on the semi-professional magazine “Marvel Tales”. After a few months, he started publishing his stories on “Weird Tales” as well. His first stories were strongly influenced by H.P. Lovecraft, so much that a part of them was set in the fictional universe of the so-called “Cthulhu Mythos”. Lovecraft’s death deeply marked Bloch, who gradually shifted his efforts toward different stories and also into science fiction.

In the ’50s, the Robert Bloch’s activity continued both in the literary field and in radio and was further expanded when he started working for television productions. The skills he had acquired in moving from one genre to another was seen in 1959, when he won the Hugo Award for the best science fiction short story with “That Hell-Bound Train” and he published the thriller / horror novel “Psycho”, which won the Edgar Allan Poe Award. The novel gave him great fame among the general public following its adaptation into the famous movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Robert Bloch died on September 23, 1994. He left a legacy of dozens of novels, screenplays and short stories of various genres. During his life he received many important awards that show the importance of this author in the field of literature, cinema and television.

Steven Allan Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. In decades of activity he directed a lot of successful movies, from “Duel” to the Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park series including amny others from blockbusters to movies with profound themes.

Poul William Anderson was born on November 25, 1926 in Bristol, Pennsylvania, USA. In 1948 Poul Anderson graduated magna cum laude in physics, in spite of this he decided to devote himself full time to a writing career. Over the decades, Poul Anderson wrote many novels and short fiction included in its various cycles and other autonomous. When fantasy started being more profitable, Anderson increased his activity in that genre. Together with his wife Karen he wrote the King of Ys series. Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001. The many awards received by his works over the decades are just one indication of their value. He’s an author who has been widely appreciated both in the field of science fiction and fantasy and is rightly considered one of the masters of these genres.

Alan Dean Foster was born on November 18, 1946 in New York City, New York, USA. In 1972 he published his first novel, “The Tar-Aiym Krang”. It’s set in Humanx Commonwealth, formed by humans and the insectoid Thranx, the fictional universe to which in which he set most of his works. It’s also the first to have Philip Lynx, also known as Flinx, and his minidrag Pip as its protagonists. In subsequent years, Alan Dean Foster wrote a long series of sequels to his first novel which form the Pip and Flinx adventures but also expanded the Humanx Commonwealth series with other subcycles set in that fictional universe. He’s also famous for writing the novelizations of many movies and stories set in the “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” universes.